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May 12, 2005

Everything is miscellaneous

Last week, after almost a year and a half of writing, I shipped my book proposal off to publishers. (Yes, my book proposal. The book itself will take about another 1.5 years to write.) My literary agent, David Miller, and I managed to cut it down from 28,000 words to 17,000. That's long for a proposal, especially since I think the book itself will be about 70,000 words. So now I'm in the midst of the multi-week process of seeing if anyone actually wants to publish it. As we say in the writing trade: Ulp.

I haven't yet figured out exactly how I want to handle blogging the writing of the book. I don't think I want to put a blog at EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com (there's nothing there yet because I've had some domain issues) because researching and writing this book isn't an isolated act for me. So, I'll probably blog it here, using the tag "EverythingIsMiscellaneous." Yes, it's long, but tagging it "Miscellaneous" really would be misleading as an external tag.

I wrote my previous book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, completely in public, posting each day's draft. Since I woke up every morning and, Penelope-like, undid what I'd written the previous day, that wasn't a very useful way of getting readers involved. So, this time I'm thinking I'll post drafts of chapters when I think they're readable. And then I will beg for comments.

And I'll certainly post bits and pieces as I think about them. See the next post.

All of this assumes — knock wood, toss salt over my shoulder, light a joss stick to Steve Johnson — that someone actually wants to publish the damn book.

[Technorati tag: EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

Posted by D. Weinberger at May 12, 2005 04:01 PM


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» Everything Is Miscellaneous from Get Real
David Weinberger just reached an important milestone on the way to publishing his next book, entitled "Everything is Miscellaneous." Namely, he finished the book proposal. I for one can't wait. I lover Small Pieces Loosely Joined (here's my review), an... [Read More]

Tracked on May 13, 2005 11:10 AM

» Everything Is Miscellaneous from Get Real
David Weinberger just reached an important milestone on the way to publishing his next book, entitled "Everything is Miscellaneous." Namely, he finished the book proposal. I for one can't wait. I lover Small Pieces Loosely Joined (here's my review), an... [Read More]

Tracked on May 13, 2005 11:12 AM

» Everything Is Miscellaneous from Get Real
David Weinberger just reached an important milestone on the way to publishing his next book, entitled "Everything is Miscellaneous." Namely, he finished the book proposal. I for one can't wait. I devoured Small Pieces Loosely Joined (here's my review),... [Read More]

Tracked on May 13, 2005 11:15 AM

» David Weinberger ponders how to write his next book in public from The Power of Many
Quoting from Everything is miscellaneous: I haven't yet figured out exactly how I want to handle blogging the writing of the book. I don't think I want to put a blog at EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com (there's nothing there yet because I've had... [Read More]

Tracked on May 13, 2005 12:21 PM

» David Weinberger ponders how to write his next book in public from The Power of Many
Quoting from Everything is miscellaneous: I haven't yet figured out exactly how I want to handle blogging the writing of the book. I don't think I want to put a blog at EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com (there's nothing there yet because I've had... [Read More]

Tracked on June 19, 2005 06:36 PM

Comments

Good luck, David!

Posted by: Brad | May 12, 2005 06:57 PM


congrats! will be looking forward to both small and large pieces joined however you choose!

Posted by: jeneane | May 12, 2005 08:32 PM


may the wind fill your sales ... I'll look forward, with anticipation, to reading it (even if 1.5 - 2 years is a bit longer than waiting for the next train).

Posted by: Jon Husband | May 12, 2005 08:45 PM


You could tag entries with "itsallmisc", trading on the popular catch-phrase, "It's all good."
:)

Posted by: renice | May 13, 2005 07:27 AM


Good luck David. I'm sure it will be published since so many of us are waiting to read it.

Posted by: fp | May 13, 2005 05:09 PM


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